


Chemical Infatuations

by peterplanet



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff !
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 14:37:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18625264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterplanet/pseuds/peterplanet
Summary: in which peter and the reader are paired up to work on a science project together and go to her house to work on it.





	Chemical Infatuations

Peter sees her for the first time in his Chemistry class. It’s in the stifling heat of the room as the Bunsen Burners are lit and the flames are waiting for a reaction to take place that he realizes for the first time just how beautiful she is.

Her hair is tied back into a bun and she’s reading over the guidelines for their next project. She seems nervous and he wonders, briefly, if she has a fear of fire. Her eyes are soft and she’s humming under her breath—although she probably doesn’t realize it—and she doesn’t seem mad that she’s working with him. He knows that her best friend is in this class (or who he _assumes_ is her best friend, although he really isn’t sure) and that she probably wanted to work with someone that she knew. She probably wanted to work with someone that she could rely on for this, and Peter doesn’t even know her last name.

They’ve been paired together for a project that will amass to be worth more than half of their grade. It takes the place of their final and they’ll be working on it for a good month, and although he doesn’t get to work with Ned on it, he can’t say that he’s too upset about the situation. She’s not the brightest girl in the class but Peter knows that she tries hard, and at the end of the day that’s what matters to him. He can help with the science if she can help with the passion.

The teacher gave them time to work on the project during class and Peter can’t even form a solid sentence when he looks at her. He wants to badly to talk to her like Flash would (minus the blatant asshole attitude attached to him): with confidence and in a flirtatious manner so that she blushes and touches him teasingly. But he’s just Peter Parker, and sometimes that’s enough but this time he believes that it won’t be.

So he tells her, quietly so that he can keep his stutter away from the weight of his breath that usually makes it break, “Sorry that you have to work with me. I know you’d probably rather be working with—”

She cuts him off then with a gaze made of fire that melts the blood in his veins until it has boiled into stardust that floats through him. She is passionate and fierce and looking at him like he’s insulted her, which is something that Peter Parker  _never_ wanted to do, so he tries to apologize again before she takes his hand in her own smaller one.

Her hands are warm against his and he can’t help but feel the stutter of his stardust-infused brain. It turns him dizzy and takes his breath away in a stutteringly nervous way and he can’t help but swallow thickly in attempt to get the nerves away from him for just one moment. He prays quietly that it helps to do that, like he’s read in books or watched in movies.

It doesn’t.

“Peter,” she assures quietly, “I don’t want you to ever think that I didn’t want to work with you just because my other friend is in this class. Honestly, you work really hard in every class that you’re in and I couldn’t think of anyone else that I’d rather be doing this project with.”

The implication of the word  _other_ within her first phrase sends him into a spiral of self-doubt. Does she mean that she considers him a friend? Does she want to  _be_ his friend? Is she just saying this to make him feel better? He loses himself to the spiral of thoughts swimming around in his head as she smiles at him before turning back to the paper before her.

“Just don’t tell her that I said that,” she adds in a conspiring whisper with a grin forming over her lips.

Peter wonders what it would be like to kiss her when she grins like that.

* * *

They agree to go over to her house the next day after school to begin to work on the project because it’ll be a Friday night. He takes the subway with her to her home after sending a text to May to let her know where he’s going to be for the next couple of hours, even though he’d spent the night before discussing with her whether or not this qualifies as a date.

_“Did she seem embarrassed when she asked you?” May offered the night before, her eyes soft with the realization that her nephew—the closest person that she would ever have to a son—was growing up and worrying about girls._

_“I mean, I-I don’t know!” Peter replied in exasperation. “I was too busy freaking out because she held my hand when I apologized that she was stuck with me for the project. She said that she wanted to work with me and that there was no one else that she’d rather work with. Was she just saying that to be nice?”_

_May had bitten back a smile and taken Peter’s hand in hers. “I think this will be a study session,” she had concluded, “but I have a feeling that there will be more to come.”_

_She had then passed him a wink before going off to (attempt to) make dinner. Whatever that wink meant, Peter couldn’t decide._

He had made her agree to go to her house during class because he couldn’t bring her back to his apartment where May knew how nervous he was. She’d embarrass him with personal questions and teasing remarks of,  _“So do you have a boyfriend?”_ Followed closely by,  _“Oh, that’s fine! Peter hasn’t had a girlfriend yet, either.”_

This would then be followed by his untimely death due to the embarrassment that she was placing on him. He didn’t want to look lame in front of (Y/N) the first time that they were alone together—meaning, without any other students around in the classroom or space that they were in together—because he wanted things to go well with her. Or as well as they could go if your name was Peter Parker and you were incredible at finding the most embarrassing and awkward things to say to someone else.

“This is me,” she had admitted as they walked up the porch steps to her house before she unlocked the front door with her key.

Her house was decorated nicely and neatly and Peter could see that whoever cleaned did a really thorough job of it. There were pictures hanging on the wall of her family and some candid shots of when she was little hanging around the living room. She looked just as happy in all of them as she did in the present.

“My dad always liked to take pictures like that,” she said quietly, almost in embarrassment, as she caught Peter staring at all of them, “he liked to capture what we looked like back in the moment so that we could remember it better when we got older. All I remember is how creepy it always seemed when he’d be taking a candid of us when I was little.” She scratched the back of her neck in nervous embarrassment as a shy smile and the hint of a blush made its way over her features.

“Sorry,” Peter began again, “I didn’t mean to, uh, stare at them or anything. I just…I always think that it’s interesting to see pictures of people from when they were little, I guess. It, uh, proves that we all started out on an even playing field.”

(Y/N) laughs at that, even though it wasn’t intended to be a joke and he knows that she knows that. But he’s not mad that she found something funny within it because her laugh sounds like the faintest tinkering of bells in the distance that makes his heart stop in his chest as he realizes that he was the cause of it. He thinks that it’s a sound that he could get used to.

“Don’t apologize, Peter,” she assures him like she’s become so accustomed to doing; however, she doesn’t sound mad or frustrated about having to repeat this to him. She’s as patient as ever with him and it’s something that he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to totally convey to her. “I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with being curious.”

* * *

They spend the next few hours working on their project and getting a good head start into it. After a while, they both lose interest in the topic at hand and sit facing each other on her bed as they discuss everything and nothing and all of the spaces in between.

Peter doesn’t know if he’s really ever been this smitten with someone before. Everything that she does makes him feel giddy and jittery and every accidental brush of their fingers that passed them while they worked sent him into a dizzy spiral of flushed cheeks and a rapidly beating heart. He thinks that she’s the most beautiful person that he’s ever seen and that, even with her messy hair tied up in a ponytail to hide how messy it truly is and a lack of makeup that she referred to as  _horrifying_ earlier, she’s still one of the most naturally beautiful people that he’s ever seen. It still makes him nervous to be around her and to hold her gaze for anything longer than one second, even if she isn’t wearing makeup.

He takes the chance to take her hand in his as they sit together, their knees touching as they face each other, and he’s pleasantly surprised when she doesn’t move away. He feels dizzy with the realization that she just squeezed his hand. When she laces her fingers into his, he thinks that he just might die because of how warm and soft her hand is. He marvels for a moment at how small her hand is in comparison to his and how gentle he feels that has to be to stay with her in the moment. If he squeezes her hand back too hard, he decides that he’ll wind up breaking her from how soft and gentle she is. It’s like she’s made of the world’s finest china and she’s going to break if he even breathes too hard around her.

She’s leaning in closer to him and it’s making him dizzy when he can smell her perfume this close. She seems nervous and unsure of what she’s doing, as though they didn’t just spend the last hour getting to know each other and the last three working on a project in the confines of her bedroom.

“Is this okay?” She asks, her voice soft as his hand finds its way to rest against her cheek.

He’s never kissed anyone before and it makes him nervous to think that she wants to kiss him. He has half the mind to tell her this, to open himself up to her with the promise that she won’t judge him, but he doesn’t. Instead, Peter finds it in him to nod his head and attempt to swallow the nerves that are building up inside of him.

“Don’t be nervous, Peter,” she assures him quietly as their noses brush and her breath fans over his lips with every syllable, “it’s only me.”

And maybe that’s what makes it all so nerve-wracking. It’s only her, but (Y/N) has never once been described with the word  _only_ resting in front of her name. It’s never been  _only_ (Y/N). It’s always been (Y/N) and it drives him wild to think that maybe she thinks along the same lines as him, as bizarre and uncharted as they are as her lips find his clumsily and her hands loop around the back of his neck.

He keeps his hands on her cheeks as they kiss for the first time because he’s too afraid of moving them and having her pull away. She smiles against his lips and he swears that he’s never felt anyone more soft and sweet in his life or ever known someone to be so genuine in everything that they do. If a kiss could be described as genuine—despite how clumsy and awkward it felt at first—Peter thinks that he would use that word to describe it all.

She pulls away from him with a breathless laugh tumbling from her lips that he assumes helps her to shake off the nerves that might be fluttering around in her stomach. If she’s in a similar state to him, Peter knows without a shadow of a doubt that she laughs because she’s nervous. Maybe, he decides, he makes her feel as nervous as she makes him feel.

It’s that thought that leads him to reconnect their lips with a smile so broad that their teeth bump a little as they begin their second kiss. He knows that she’s smiling, too, and her hands are on his wrists against her cheeks as she pulls away from the happiest kiss that he’s ever experienced (granted, he’s only ever had two and the first one was nervous).

She looks at him with such a soft expression that he thinks that he might melt as she whispers, her hands still holding his wrists as she draws soft circles into the skin of them, “I’m  _so_ glad that we were partnered together for this project, Peter.”


End file.
